Читать книгу The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún - Christopher Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien - Страница 11

Old Norse poetry follows precisely the same principles in the matter of ‘alliteration’ as does Old English poetry. Those principles were formulated thus by my father in his account of Old English metre cited earlier.

One full lift in each half-line must alliterate. The ‘key alliteration’ was borne by the first lift in the second half. (This sound was called by Snorri Sturluson höfuðstafr, whence the term ‘head-stave’ used in English books.) With the head-stave the stronger lift in the first half-line must alliterate, and both lifts may do so. In the second half-line the second lift must not alliterate.

Thus, in the opening section of the Lay of the Völsungs, Upphaf, in the thirteenth stanza, lines 5–6, the deep Dragon / shall be doom of Thór, the d of doom is the head-stave, while in Snorri’s terminology the d of deep and Dragon are the stuðlar, the props or supports. The Th of Thór, the second lift of the second half-line, does not alliterate. It will be seen that in Upphaf both lifts of the first half do in fact alliterate with the head-stave in the majority of cases.

It is important to recognize that in Germanic verse ‘alliteration’ refers, not to letters, but to sounds; it is the agreement of the stressed elements beginning with the same consonant, or with no consonant: all vowels ‘alliterate’ with one another, as in the opening line of Upphaf, Of old was an age / when was emptiness. In English the phonetic agreement is often disguised to the eye by the spelling: thus in the same stanza, where lines 5–6 alliterate on ‘r’, unwrought was Earth, / unroofed was Heaven; or in stanza 8 of section IV of the Lay of the Völsungs, where lines 1–2 alliterate on the sound ‘w’: A warrior strange, / one-eyed, awful.

The consonant-combinations sk, sp, and st will usually only alliterate with themselves; thus in the Lay of the Völsungs section IV, stanza 9, lines 3–4, the sword of Grímnir /singing splintered does not show alliteration on both lifts of the second half-line, nor does section V, stanza 24, line 3–4, was sired this horse, / swiftest, strongest.